We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language.

Too long has the public mind considered religion to be synonymous with priestcraft.

But in due course it became evident that not only a physical situation qua physics, but the meaning of that situation to people, was sometimes a factor, through the behavior of people, in the start of a fire.

We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language.

We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it in this way - an agreement that holds through our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language.

Language is not simply a reporting device for experience but a defining framework for it.

A change in language can transform our appreciation of the cosmos.